Fascism, Fascism Everywhere, Yet Barely A Drop Of Ink
Good News, Bad News Special Edition for July 11, 2024. With 117 days left until Election Day we need political coverage that uplifts and defends democracy.
Every week until the election, we’ll compare our pro-democracy election coverage guidelines with ongoing election coverage to highlight which newsrooms are standing up for democracy and which are sleepwalking us towards a dictatorship. We hope this inspires you to make more informed choices about where you get your news and strengthens your resolve to join us in advocating for the pro-democracy media Americans need. And now…
Attacks on American's Democracy, Health, and Safety Are a Bigger Story Than Incessant Coverage of Biden’s Fitness
I promise that next week I’ll get to some good news with regards to election coverage, but, holy moly, have you seen all the bad news?!
On June 26th, Joe Biden was old. We knew this because our national newsrooms ran thousands of stories about it over the last couple of years. But by the end of the next day, and a presidential debate that was bad for lots of reasons, he was the oldest man ever to be alive, despite aging at the same rate as everyone else. Addled by a lifelong stutter and recovering from a cold, Biden stumbled when speaking to the nation in the evening hours of June 27th. Within nanoseconds of the debate’s end, all hell broke loose at every corporate media outlet in America.
Indeed, Joe Biden is old and can be incoherent for short periods. That reality led to a poor debate performance. But the president’s weak voice and sometimes garbled rhetoric caused our national media to completely lose the plot several times over.
Below is a list of just some of the ways journalists at prominent outlets have failed to convey the most vital election information of all—the choice this fall is simple, democracy or fascism.
Plot Loss #1 - Lies Are Worse Than Stumbles
In an arena where truth mattered above all else, both when laying out one’s own policy positions and in attacking one’s opponent, Donald Trump’s incessant lying meant he had a worse debate than Biden. A president who is old and doddering is one thing, but a former president who literally cannot tell the truth on the national stage should be instantly condemned by all.
Journalists are supposed to nail down facts to arrive at truth. It’s the most essential service they provide to the public. CNN’s choice to refrain from policing the truthfulness of either candidate’s pronouncements during the debate was an utter failure. Since journalism wasn’t a feature of the evening, Taylor Swift or even a hologram of Tupac Shakur could have performed the role of mindless question asker better, and with a bigger ratings boon, than Jake Tapper and Dana Bash (CNN, if you can hear me I’ve got tons more great ideas like this).

By the time Daniel Dale’s much smaller CNN audience was hearing about which candidate said more false things (30 for Trump, 9 for Biden), it was too late. The media’s hyper-focus on Biden in the debate’s aftermath gave a pass to Trump’s disqualifying lies. Our election coverage guidelines instruct newsrooms to protect Americans from disinformation.

Plot Loss #2 - Presidents Are Now Kings
Lost in the breathless calls for Biden to resign the presidency (!!!) is the new, frightening reality created for us in a July 1st ruling by our corrupt Supreme Court. United States presidents can now “go on a four-to-eight-year crime spree, steal all the money and murder all the people they can get their hands on, all under the guise of presumptive ‘official’ behavior, and then retire from public life, never to be held accountable for their crimes while in office.” (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
That’s how Elie Mystal put it in his chilling piece for The Nation entitled: “The President Can Now Assassinate You, Officially.” Mystal went on to say:
There will be Republicans and legal academics and whatever the hell job Jonathan Turley has who will go into overdrive arguing that the decision isn’t as bad as all that. These bad-faith actors will be quoted or even published in The Washington Post and The New York Times. They will argue that presidents can still be prosecuted for “unofficial acts,” and so they will say that everything is fine.
But they will be wrong, because while the Supreme Court says “unofficial” acts are still prosecutable, the court has left nearly no sphere in which the president can be said to be acting “unofficially.” And more importantly, the court has left virtually no vector of evidence that can be deployed against a president to prove that their acts were “unofficial.” If trying to overthrow the government is “official,” then what isn’t?
Which is worse, an enfeebled President Biden who believes in the rule of law and is backed by a party and administrative staff that still believes in democracy, or a fascist Trump with the monarchical power to commit further heinous acts with impunity, while backed by the extremists behind Project 2025? That’s up for every voter to decide based on the information they receive about politics from our major, national news outlets. Bad news? The outlets think being old is worse.
Journalist Jennifer Schulze discovered that, from the end of the debate on June 27th through the morning of July 5th, The New York Times treated Biden’s fragility as roughly 4 times more important than American fascism. She counted a whopping 192 articles in the Times that were specifically related to Biden’s debate performance–in the span of one week! Over the same period, she found only 48 Times pieces on SCOTUS’ shocking immunity case ruling that Trump, and all future U.S. presidents, have absolute immunity to do anything they want.

If Biden’s agedness is communicated to readers of the Times as being 4 times more important than the end of democracy, how might that affect the decisions voters make, based on what they perceive to be the biggest threat to America’s future? The agendas reported by the Times become the agendas of every other major newsroom. Social media users then see and share these stories. The Times heavily contributes to the culture of what matters in American politics.
Plot Loss #3 - America Just Became Much More Dangerous
In the same week as the Biden and Trump debate, our corrupt SCOTUS-majority issued rulings related to something called ‘Chevron Doctrine’ that ended the ability of any federal regulatory agency to effectively ensure the health and safety of the American people.
From a Jessica Glenza Guardian article:
“This was a gut punch for health, safety and the environment in the US,” said Prof Lawrence O. Gostin, an expert in health law and a professor at Georgetown Law’s O’Neill Institute. “There’ll be no area where agencies act to protect the public’s health or safety or the environment that won’t be adversely affected by this ruling.”
Here’s a video I found that pretty succinctly sums up what’s going on:
I counted 16 New York Times articles on the subject since the Supreme Court’s June 28th Chevron ruling. Most of those articles were published on the day of the ruling itself, with a steady decline after that in reporting on one of the most consequential judicial branch outcomes of the last 40 years. The damage done by ending Chevron deference will be felt by Americans long after Joe Biden or Donald Trump leave office after a potential second term, but news about it was only deemed important for one news cycle by America’s most influential paper.
As for today’s Times front page, there is yet another article about Biden’s age and zero articles about Chevron. Also missing from the front page is any news on the two U.S. Senators who just asked the Department of Justice to appoint a Special Counsel to investigate Justice Thomas’ corruption, a U.S. Congresswoman filing articles of impeachment against Justices Thomas and Alito, or Donald Trump’s dangerous and often incoherent rally speech at his Doral golf club—news that many Americans would consider fit to prominently print with only 4 months to go before choosing a president who’ll potentially replace some of those same Justices who are currently making a mockery of American jurisprudence.
Plot Loss #4 - Calls for Candidates to Drop Out Based on Right-Wing Disinformation Is D.C. Media Catnip
A dangerous tale of “Biden has Parkinson’s” disinformation, spread inappropriately by our nation’s “elite” political journalists, summarized in two tweets:
Turns out, when you peel back the curtain our most storied newsrooms are full of people more interested in indulging inexorable, out of control narratives than doing basic journalism. Joe Biden doesn’t have Parkinson's disease and the doctor in this BS story is a highly esteemed neurologist who visits the White House for reasons having nothing to do with the president. Newsrooms rushed to push out a story by a right-wing disinformation peddler at Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. But, we’ve seen this type of thing before from our nation’s press. Recall that Hillary Clinton’s 1-day health issue was turned into a huge deal by right-wing media that sent national newsrooms into unhinged speculation over her ability to stay in the race.
Now, with Biden, we’ve reached nuclear levels of this phenomenon. Yes, it’s a big story that Biden’s old and flopped in the debate. But, again, is it as big a story as the loss of American democracy, the corrupt high priests of the Supreme Court detonating federal regulations, or those same judicial extremists inviting future presidents to commit any crime with zero consequences?
Ask yourself if the above coverage of Biden is merited given that 92 fewer articles could have been written about his age in the week following the debate and that would mean the New York Times had still run 100 articles about his fitness!
To their…credit (?) the Times did just come out today with a piece saying that Donald Trump is unfit to lead.
But, they sure are quick to note that this is just the opinion of the Editorial Board. Which implies it’s not the opinion of the newsroom. Recall, several months after his coup attempt in 2021, the Times newsroom was lustily hoping for Trump to announce he’d run again.
An editorial in July of 2024 claiming Trump is unfit to lead is too little, too late.
For the sake of our constitutional republic, we need our national newsrooms to get at least 4 times as serious in reporting the threats to democracy posed by Trump and his allies as they are about demanding Biden step aside.
Ultimately, no one knows what will happen this November 5th. But every day until then Americans have the opportunity to be informed of the stakes of their choice. The two men currently in the race are ultimately mere figureheads representing two starkly different paths. It is imperative that our newsrooms describe those paths, and their consequences, in exhaustive detail while, of course, informing us of the individual health and behavior of the two candidates.
But don’t just take it from me. Check out Margaret Sullivan’s great piece for The Guardian on this same topic.
Extra Credit: Pro-Democracy Cartoon Of The Week
Democracy’s Survival Requires That Newsrooms Reset to Focus on What’s at Stake
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